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Sunday, March 09, 2014

Book Review- Comandante:Inside Hugo Chavez's Venezuela

This is my review on Amazon of Rory Carroll's book about Hugo Chavez and his "Bolivarian Revolution":

This portrait of Venezuela & it's late
leader shows the disastrous nature of Chavez's misrule but also
illuminates, to an extent, why Chavez was popular with the country's poor.

The
opposition at least until around 2007, comes across as hypocritical,
self satisfied and generally uninterested in the slum dwellers and
peasants. The account given of the 2002 coup d'etat is damning. Chavez
did genuinely connect with the forgotten masses of Venezuela despite his
venality and could make them proud of themselves.

However it's
pretty clear that Chavez's rule has been characterised by a destruction
of democratic norms- with opponents being routinely jailed, opposition
media shut down and massive state surveillance. Although perhaps
surprisingly he never went the whole way and abolished democracy
entirely- despite his links to Cuba free elections weren't abolished and
dissidents were not murdered.

This has been combined with a level of incompetence that has reduced Venezuela to beggary despite a prolonged oil boom.

Chavez's
style of rule- as shown in Comandante- consisted of making grandiose
announcements in public, swiftly losing interest in how things
developed, allowing cronies to enrich themselves and then making a new
announcement a few months later that undid whatever progress had been
made towards meeting his previous one.

The highly centralised
nature of his rule also ensured that his ministers were focused entirely
on getting access to him rather than on their actual jobs and any
subject which didn't interest him- like crime- spiralled out of control.
Placing short term political goals ahead of long term development has destroyed industrial development in the country.

The Chavez
portrayed in this book wasn't a monster, but his faults have caused
great damage to a the fabric of the nation he professed to love.